CBS Fires Lawyer Over Facebook Comments About Las Vegas Mass Shooting

The comments, which have since been deleted, express a lack of sympathy for shooting victims in Las Vegas because they may have been Republicans.

The television network CBS on 2 October 2017 fired an attorney who in the hours following the largest mass shooting in recent American history in Las Vegas, apparently made insensitive comments about the victims.

Comments made by CBS attorney Hayley Geftman-Gold were captured via a screen shot and published by the conservative non-profit media organization, The Daily Caller News Foundation. Based on the screenshot, the comments, which have since been deleted, appear to have been made on a Facebook post.

Geftman-Gold wrote of the shooting, in which a man opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino onto a crowd of country music concert attendees, killing more than 50 and wounding hundreds:

If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing, I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.

In response to the comments, a CBS spokesperson told us:

This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS. Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS. Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas and their families

Geftman-Gold had identified herself as a “vice president and senior counsel for strategic transactions at CBS Corporation,” according to her LinkedIn profile.

Thousands of people attended the Route 91 Harvest festival, a three-day country music festival. 58 people were killed when the gunman opened fire on the crowd below. The death toll surpassed the 2016 Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people were killed.